OS X Lion Upgrade Remedy - Disable Spotlight and Clear Spotlight Indices
After wasting time with AppleCare support (who appear to have no idea how OSX actually works and how to troubleshoot it), I finally solved my continued OSX churning by disabling Spotlight indexing on all volumes, completing all configuration changes, shutting down all applications, reenabling Spotlight indexing, rebuilding the Spotlight indices and then letting the computer sit overnight to index itself. Until I did this, OSX kept churning and locking up its own indexing system as it fought with Mac Mail and other apps over access to files.
To disable Spotlight indexing, open a Terminal window and type (enter your password if/when prompted): sudo mdutil -i off /
To enable Spotlight indexing, open a Terminal window and type (enter your password if/when prompted): sudo mdutil -i on /
After enabling Spotlight indexing, tell Spotlight to rebuild the indices by opening a Terminal window and typing (enter your password if or when prompted): sudo mdutil -E /
A quick search of Apple’s forums concludes that this is a common need of users and AppleCare doesn’t know how to recognize that it is needed and they are prohibited from telling you to do it (because it requires command line action).
